SiteGround vs. Inmotion – Comparison 2020

Last updated on: June 2020

Hello there. Are you confused on what hosting company is best to host your website? Well, we have all been there. There are just way too many companies out there, and quite frankly it can be quite challenging to find the best hosting company which will provide you with the best services. The process of searching for the best hosting company will cost you a lot of time and money, and there is also no guarantee that you will come up with the best option.

To save you from this trouble, we have tried the services of hundreds of hosting companies at the expense of our time and money. Through this process, we have made a thorough analysis and testing of the hosting companies to come up with the best ones. What we have found out is that SiteGround and Inmotion stood out from the rest of the other companies. Therefore, we have come up with a comparison to help you understand which hosting company offers better services and solutions, and also which hosting site to pick to help with your business's needs. Before the comparison begins here is what makes SiteGround and Inmotion different from other companies.

Why makes SiteGround and Inmotion Stand Out?

Both SiteGround and Inmotion possess various qualities which makes them stand out from the crowd. A few of the reasons as to why we have picked SiteGround and Inmotion hosting are as follows:

To Begin with, both SiteGround and Inmotion hosting are well-established companies. SiteGround was founded in 2004 whereas Inmotion was founded in 2001.

They also have very well established in the hosting industry with both companies hosting thousands of domains worldwide.

SiteGround was awarded the Best Employer of the Year twice, and Better Business Bureau.org ratings also gave Inmotion an A+. These companies are not short of awards and accolades.

Both SiteGround and Inmotion have improved their infrastructure over the course of their lifetime. This has ensured that speed and performance are not compromised thus providing state of the art technology to its customers.

When it comes to the fees, SiteGround and Inmotion will not break your bank as they are easy on your pockets. This has made them accessible to a wide range of business needs.

Now that you know what makes these companies stand out from the rest of the other hosting companies let us get into a more detailed comparison of the two.

The Plans and Pricing

When we talk about plans and pricing, it varies from company to company. However, one that which is common between SiteGround and Inmotion is that both these companies are Premium hosting companies. These companies provide a premium service, and as such, they demand premium prices too. You will get your money's worth when you invest in any of these companies.

SiteGround: SiteGround has the following types of Hosting

Web Hosting (StartUp, GrowBig, and GoGeek)

Cloud Hosting (Entry, Business, Business Plus and Super Power)

Enterprise Hosting

WordPress Hosting (StartUp, GrowBig, and GoGeek)

SiteGround has a wide variety of plans to accommodate all types of business needs, and they are also quite reasonable regarding pricing.

Inmotion offers a wider variety of hosting services compared to SiteGround. Prices are affordable across the board. However, if you are planning to scale things up, Inmotion provides dedicated servers to fulfill your needs.

To Get a Better understanding of the different plans and pricing each Company provides, we have prepared a Comparison chart below.

Web Hosting Comparison

SiteGround

Inmotion

Plans

StartUp

GrowBig

GoGeek

LAUNCH

POWER

PRO

Price (monthly)

$3.95

$5.95

$11.95

$6.39

$8.49

$14.71

No. of websites

1

Unlimited

Unlimited

2

6

Unlimited

Money back guarantee

30 Days

30 Days

30 Days

90 Days

90 Days

90 Days

Bandwidth

Unlimited

Unlimited

Unlimited

Unlimited

Unlimited

Unlimited

Uptime Guarantee

99.9%

99.9%

99.9%

99.9%

99.9%

99.9%

Email accounts

Unlimited

Unlimited

Unlimited

Unlimited

Unlimited

Unlimited

As is seen from the above comparison both these companies offer the comparable services. We think that both of them provide excellent value for money. Inmotion hosting may seem to be slightly on the expensive side; however, it has the longer money back guarantee period and marginally better speeds which you will read further below.

Cloud Hosting Comparison

SiteGround

Inmotion

Plans

Entry

Business

Business Plus

Super Power

1000HA-S

2000HA-S

3000HA-S

Price (monthly)

$80

$120

$160

$240

$29.19

$47.39

$69.34

RAM

4 GB

6 GB

8 GB

10 GB

4 GB

6 GB

8 GB

Storage

40 GB

60 GB

80 GB

120 GB

75 GB

150 GB

260 GB

Bandwidth

5 TB

5 TB

5 TB

5 TB

4 TB

5 TB

6 TB

Uptime Guarantee

99.9%

99.9%

99.9%

99.9%

99.9%

99.9%

99.9%

When we talk about Cloud Hosting features on both the hosting companies, Siteground tends to show a higher monthly fee. However, Siteground provides a higher quantity of RAM storage which goes up to 10 GB and also more constant bandwidth across the plans. Inmotion, on the other hand, provides slightly lower pricing, has more amount of storage and offers more bandwidth in the costliest plan.

Both companies provide more than adequate features for the price, and they offer excellent value for money. If you are on a tighter budget, opting for Inmotion is an excellent choice, however, if you can stretch your budget SiteGround offers slightly better features for the price.

WordPress Hosting Comparison

SiteGround

Inmotion hosting

Plans

StartUp

GrowBig

GoGeek

WP1000S

WP2000S

WP3000S

WP4000S

WP5000S

WP6000S

Price (monthly)

$3.95

$5.95

$11.95

$7.26

$11.38

$15.50

$31.10

$62.24

$119.28

No. of websites

1

Unlimited

Unlimited

1

2

3

6

10

20

Suitable visitors

~10,000

~25,000

~100,000

~20,000

~50,000

~125,000

~300,000

~600,000

~1,200,000

Storage

10 GB

20 GB

30 GB

40 GB

80 GB

120 GB

160 GB

200 GB

240 GB

Email accounts

Unlimited

Unlimited

Unlimited

Unlimited

Unlimited

Unlimited

Unlimited

Unlimited

Unlimited

Uptime Guarantee

99.9%

99.9%

99.9%

99.9%

99.9%

99.9%

99.9%

99.9%

99.9%

As is seen from the above comparison there is a massive difference in the price, no. of suitable visitors and storage provided. SiteGround is ideal for websites which will have less traffic movement. While on the other hand Inmotion hosting is suitable for sites which have a lot of traffic. Therefore, through the above comparison, one can be able to pick out the best hosting company according to your website's needs.

Uptime, Network, and Reliability

When it comes to Uptime, both SiteGround and Inmotion provide an uptime Guarantee of 99.9%. Data Graphs of both companies indicate that these companies offer uptime which is close to 100%, whereas the downtime lasts only for nine minutes in the case of SiteGround and three minutes for Inmotion hosting. These numbers go to show that both companies offer superb uptime and you cannot go wrong with any one of them.

When it comes to Network, SiteGround has data centers in the US located at Chicago, in the United Kingdom at London, and the European continent has one in Europe while in the Asia Pacific Region the data center is in Singapore. Therefore SiteGround offers broad accessibility as well as flexibility to the users. In the case of Inmotion hosting, their primary data centers are primarily located in the United States with one found on the Western Coast in Los Angeles and one in the Eastern Coast situated in Virginia respectively. Both the two hosting companies employ the latest and greatest in hosting technology providing the fastest route to its customers so that the client or the visitors of the sites will be able to access faster connection.

Coupled with the Superb Uptime performance provided by both the hosting companies, and the vast connection web of its network, it is safe to declare that both SiteGround and Inmotion hosting is exceptionally reliable and capable host. This proves that Reliability is an issue which is decidedly less likely to crop up in present times and even in the future as well.

Speed

Having good uptime numbers, network and reliability is a must. However, these attributes are of little use if the hosting company is not able to deliver on the performance front. The hosting companies should be able to provide blazing speeds, and this feature is extremely crucial to a company's success. If a website fails to load in under 5 seconds, there is a very high chance that users might be discouraged from ever visiting your sites. Therefore Hosting companies should see to it that speed is not compromised to prevent loss of prospective customers.

Rest assured in the Speed Department in regards to SiteGround vs Inmotion both deliver superb speed and high performance. The websites hosted by these companies are known to provide blazing fast speeds. To further add credit, both SiteGround and Inmotion hosting offer free Solid State Drives by default when someone signs up in the company. Having an SSD is pretty essential if you are planning on using the caching method to enhance your website. SSDs are known to be up to twenty times faster at retrieving data compared to more traditional devices such as hard drives. This term is known as IOPS which stands for Input/Output Operations per Second. So the higher the IOPS, the faster the speed.

One factor which also contributes to the speed of these hosting companies is that they do not put many websites on the same server. There are specific company policies which prevent them from hosting a lot of websites on a single server, thus effectively preventing the overloading of servers. This enables websites to deliver much better speed compared other hosting sites which cram servers with a lot of websites which effectively slowing them down.

To get a better understanding of the performance of these two hosting sites we did a real-world speed test in an uncontrolled environment where real-world circumstances will crop up. The test involved installations of WordPress and Joomla on both SiteGround and Inmotion servers. The tools we used for the speed tests were Pingdom Tools and GTMetrix as they were the most common and readily available speed testing tools.

WordPress speed test results: WordPress results were pretty fast on both the hosting company's servers. SiteGround had an average speed of 1.5 seconds which is pretty acceptable. On the other hand, Inmotion delivered slightly better results at 1.41 seconds, but this might be contributed due to the testing server being closer in location to the test location. However, when it comes to real life performance, the speed is negligible, and you won't notice any significant differences.

Joomla speed test results: Joomla, on the other hand, seemed to deliver slightly better results compared to WordPress. This might be due to Joomla's light nature. SiteGround gave an average speed of 1.3 seconds through the testing server, and the testing location was far away from each other. When it came to Inmotion, it delivered lightning fast speeds of 0.857 seconds. One should keep in mind that in this case the server and test location were nearby.

We did a couple of further testing using multiple server locations and what was similar across the board was that the closer the test location was to the server location, the faster results it delivered. These results indicate that both the Hosting companies are capable of providing exceptional results wherever your position maybe with a minimal decline in speeds. The results are an indication of the excellent infrastructure both these companies possess.

Speed Test Results

Although both these companies deliver superb results, there has to be a winner here and judging by the test results we have seen. We see that regarding speed and performance Inmotion Servers have a slight edge above SiteGround Servers. Inmotion's initial response times were a tad better than SiteGround's servers. However don't take anything away from SiteGround as the difference was a mere matter of seconds.

What we see is that location plays a crucial role in the speed and performance a server delivers and visitor experience. Therefore depending upon where your company is based, you should choose the server which is nearest to you to experience the best speeds.

Which Company offers better Technical Support?

Customer Support is that one factor that distinguishes a great company from a good company. When everything is running smooth customer support, their technical expertise and response times are something which is not taken into account. However, everyone will come across those bad days wherein having the proper customer service support experience is the difference between a good experience and a horrible or frustrating one.

SiteGround's Customer Support and Service

Let us begin with the support response time of SiteGround. SiteGround offers one of the best response times that we have experienced so far. SiteGround representatives will give you a response within a matter of seconds and as such the waiting period is almost non-existent. The channels which you can use to get in touch with the customer support of SiteGround are email, chat rooms, and telephone lines. This response forms the first line of support that SiteGround employs to get in touch with customers.

If your problem is of a more complex nature and cannot be solved through this first line of response, then it is forwarded to the second line of support. Keep in mind that the second line of support has a slightly longer response time, which ranges from fifteen minutes to an hours' time. Your problems might not be solved in an instant but may involve taking a few steps forward and backward

SiteGround's support team gives its customers the facilities to request for technical and advanced technical support and services. The Technical support can be availed when your website may be down, when you need mail and domain assistance, changing credentials and passwords, etc. Advanced Technical support can be requested when your site's response time has become slow, when you want to restore and backup your websites, or when you want to transfer websites or other web elements.

On the whole, the Customer Support and service provided by SiteGround is exceptionally high. The Satisfaction rate of SiteGround's customer service ranks very high, and during our times with SiteGround's Customer services, we encountered little to no problems. To top it off its service are available 24 x 7. SiteGround's Customer support offices are based in Bulgaria.

Inmotion's Customer Support and Service

Just like SiteGround, Inmotion also offers 24 x 7 Customer support, but in this case, they are based in the United States. Their customer services can also be availed through various channels as well. The most common channel is through chat, and we used this service to get in touch with them. The response times of Inmotion are also pretty quick, and on an average, they take about Five minutes or less.

The complaints are taken in by a support agent, and they are highly knowledgeable in their fields. However, when the first line of support is not able to address your query, you are not disconnected; instead, you are asked to wait for a few minutes while they support agents themselves get in touch with the Second line support agents. The support agents see to it that you get a response and a resolution to your problem. This ensures that you do not take the trouble of disconnecting and engaging to a new line of support. This unique feature that Inmotion provides makes its customer support and services stand out from the crowd. So, while connected to an Inmotion Support Agent, there is a very high chance of you resolving your issue before the connection gets disconnected.

There is no clear winner in this comparison between SiteGround vs Inmotion when it comes to Customer Support and Services. Both these companies are equally capable in their own right and offer excellent support and services. The Experience we got out of these two companies was similarly tremendous and admirable. It's a win-win situation for both the company and the customer.

What areas does SiteGround excel in?

SiteGround brings with it a few advantages over Inmotion which are as follows:

SiteGround provides AutoUpdates to WordPress and Joomla Core. What this does it that along with the WordPress and Joomla Core update Security patches are also applied along with it. This ensures that websites are safe and do not get hacked.

When it comes to the Security front, SiteGround is very proactive about it. They are one of the first hosting companies to include SSL certificates along with Let’s Encrypt. What they are trying to accomplish is to make as many websites secure as possible by making them use of HTTPS to make it safer.

SiteGround has also developed new technologies on their own for making websites faster, some of which are SuperCacher, Custom Caching modules, etc. on top of that SiteGround has a faster adoption rate and they quickly embrace new technologies which enable them to provide the latest technological offerings to its customers.

What Areas does Inmotion excel in?

Inmotion also brings some unique features along with it, which makes it stand out from SiteGround. They are mentioned below

Inmotion is equipped with faster servers. This is quite evident from the speed test results wherein Inmotion has a slight edge over SiteGround. When your work demands speed, then Inmotion is the hosting company to choose.

When it comes to Cloud hosting, it is evident from the comparison chart that Inmotion offers more affordable hosting solutions. Despite being affordable, there are little no compromises as they provide the best there is in the world of Cloud hosting.

To sweeten the deal Inmotion also offers a free domain to its users. This is a pretty helpful thing for people who are just starting out. On top of that, you get free advertising credit worth $250. This credit can be used with any of the Plans which Inmotion Provides.

Which Hosting Company (SiteGround vs InMotion) is worth the money?

As is seen from the above comparison both SiteGround and Inmotion are two very premium hosting companies and their services are not cheap as well. So to get your money's worth, you must get premium features which are not offered in other cheap companies. And from experience we have gained so far after using the services of both these hosting companies, it is safe to say that both of them have a lot of great things going on and they indeed deliver premium features. Both SiteGround and Inmotion get all the basics of hosting right and even excel at that. To pick a winner would be doing injustice to both these companies as both of them are winners in their own right. It ultimately depends on your personal needs which may differ accordingly. You may be guided by different aspects which may include speed, security, uptime, traffic, server location, etc.